Old questions

My interest in the Kosovar/Bosnian conflicts has recently been reignited. I was sadly ignorant of these conflicts when they were going on, but that is being remedied. Never too late to learn? I hope not.

It is fascinating, frightening, disturbing what happened there. Men and women destroying each other's lives because of lies told to them, because of 800 year old conflicts, because of social and political debts never repaid.

This has all renewed in my mind the questions surrounding the issue addressed by Edward Burke in Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents (1770):

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall

one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

This has often been restated as:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

So how do we, as individuals, as "good men" have an effect on genocide, on murder among countrymen when our governments will do nothing? As the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo were happening, we (the U.S.) and much of the rest of the world, including the U.N., did virtually nothing. We sat back and waited to see what would happen. Despite all the world's pledges at the end of World War II - that a genocide of this kind would never happen again - it did happen. It was happening and nothing was being done by the world community to stop it.

Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Indonesia. Ethnic "cleansing" has consistenly occurred since World War II. When should other countries step in and stop it? "It isn't our business," some people say, but often these are the same people who scream and stamp their feet at injustice and cruelty. It seems to me you can't ask for both things - both keeping America's nose out of another country's business and desiring that cruelty and murder cease, because, in truth, there are bad men who will not stop because the world wants them to, asks them to, or sanctions them. Sometimes they will only stop if they are made to do so. Force.

Yuck. It seems a rather negative way to view the world, but I think it is in some cases the truth.

So the question remains: how am I as an individual to make a difference?

I don't know. I don't have a good answer. I think, though, it might start by being educated about the world around me, by at least trying to understand the things that have happened and are happening.

And I think we should remember the things that good men have said. They can gird us up for the good fight. In June of 1963, President Kennedy said:

...What kind of peace do I mean? Not a Pax Americana enforced

on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the

grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace,

the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that

enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better

life for their children - not merely for Americans, but peace for

all men and women - not merely peace in our time but

peace for all time.

For in the final analysis, our most basic, common link is that we all

inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air.

We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

So may we all read, listen and learn. May we all be willing to say "no" when bad men arise and threaten not only us, but others - even those far away. May we never simply say, "It's not my problem." How do we do this? I still don't know, but I'll keep looking for an answer.